


Dark Square Bishop

by Blissymbolics



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Homoerotic Chess, M/M, Psychological Drama, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29601186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blissymbolics/pseuds/Blissymbolics
Summary: Jon takes a deep breath, even though he’s not entirely sure if his lungs require air anymore. “Tell you what, if you win this game, you may have me. If I win, I shall have you.”Elias looks ready to devour him. “And if it’s a draw?”“Then perhaps we can arrive at a mutual agreement.”Statement of Jonathan Sims and Elias Bouchard, regarding their tenuous professional relationship, discussed over a game of chess.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	Dark Square Bishop

“Hello Jon. Thank you for joining me. Would you care to join me for a game of chess?”

Despite being no more than ten feet away, Elias’ voice sounds grainy, like a recording siphoned through too many reproductions.

Jon stares at the lacquered chess board. It’s the only object in the entire room that gives off any sense of warmth, the polish so heavy it almost looks hot to the touch. All the pieces are neatly assembled, and the vessel of Elias Bouchard is sitting patiently at the small table. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, displaying unnaturally purple veins that criss-cross down his forearms and weave over the backs of his hands.

Jon takes a tentative step closer, and swears the lights around him flicker.

“A game of chess seems pointless between two all-knowing beings,” Jon observes, his voice as dry as the cracked leather of the books lining the shelves.

Elias gives a small nod in acknowledgment. “And if we make a pact to abstain from peering into each other’s minds?” he asks, crossing his arms and quirking his head.

Jon’s knuckles tense. “Would it matter? Chess is logical. A computer can program a perfect game against itself. Moves are objectively ranked from best to worst. If we both contain all the knowledge in the world, then the only way this could possibly end is in a draw.” His cracked lips sting around every word.

“We are not computers though. There must be some shred of humanity left between the two of us. We have impulses and anxieties. If chess were about nothing more than a hierarchy of memorized moves, then we would have grown bored of it centuries ago.”

There’s a tinge on blood on Jon’s lower lip, and he can't resist chewing at the damaged skin. He reaches out to grasp the head of the offered chair. Elias waits, and the world outside groans and contracts with wind as gray as dust.

“Fine. One game,” Jon acquiesces. He refuses to look at Elias as he pulls out the chair and takes his seat. He understands that he walked straight into the spider’s web, but at this point, he’s half-considering letting himself be devoured.

“Excellent.” Elias claps his hands together in petulant glee. “White or black?”

Jon stares down at the board. His mind glitches, and he briefly forgets which color moves first. He swears he can hear the wheels of a tape recorder spinning in his head.

“Do I truly have a choice?” he asks.

“Of course,” Elias replies, as though it were the question of an insecure child.

Jon sighs. “Does my choice matter?”

Elias shrugs and leans back in his chair, and all the joints seem to creak in unison. “It depends on what type of game you would like to play. Now, white or black?”

Jon’s gaze falls back to the board. Elias’ teeth are bright like the headlights of an oncoming car.

“Black,” he decides.

“Interesting. May I ask why?”

“I want to see what type of game you think this is.”

Elias smiles. “Very well. Black is yours. My move first.”

He leans forward to contemplate the board. His eyes shift across the tiles, interrogating each piece to determine whether it’s worthy of his attention. Finally, he reaches down, and with his thumb and forefinger pinches the top of his king’s pawn, its round head smooth like a berry ready to be crushed. He places it two blocks forward, then leans back in satisfaction.

“Pawn to E4. How traditional,” Jon remarks, trying to sound bored.

With little to no deliberation, Jon takes his queen’s pawn and slides it one tile forward.

“D6,” Elias says, with a faux hint of surprise. “Pirc defense?”

John sighs in annoyance. “I’m not interested in your bloody commentary.”

Elias gives a small laugh. “Very well, there is plenty else for us to talk about.” He pinches his queen’s pawn and slides it forward to sit beside his king’s: two guards standing in Jon’s path.

“Do you remember when you first applied to work at the Institute?” Elias asks while Jon studies the board. “Do you know why I selected you for an interview, despite your comparative lack of qualifications?”

Jon can sense the derision in his tone, but he can take it. After all, no one can deny that he was a pitifully lousy archivist.

“Because I had been marked by the spider,” Jon replies. It’s a statement, not a question, but in truth, he’s not sure if it’s the correct answer.

Elias nods. “Yes, that was certainly a factor. But you’d be surprised how many people apply for jobs at the Institute due to past encounters with the entities. After all, who else would be mad enough to work for us? Mandy up in conservation once treated a moldy book that was actually an artifact of the Corruption. But do you know what made you special?”

Jon’s curiosity is piqued. He’s sure he won’t like the answer.

“Enlighten me.” He moves his knight to F6.

Elias takes his time. He stares down at the board for several minutes while Jon drums his nails on the edge of the table, hoping that Elias finds it viciously irritating. Time may be limitless here, but Jon can still feel each second ticking away inside his head.

Finally, Elias slowly lifts his left knight and places it on C3, a mirror image of Jon’s former move.

“It was a minor detail in the list of esoteric achievements on your CV: Dorset Junior Chess Runner-Up 2000. I found it amusing that an adult with a degree from Oxford would include an achievement from middle school on his professional CV.”

“I’m pretty sure I just recycled my university application with little editing.” Pawn to G6.

“And I’m glad you did. You see, I’ve loved chess my whole life. When you’re a homely and unsociable child homebound with chronic chest infections, besting your peers at parlor games is often the only taste of dominance you can hope for. And I am, by instinct, a very dominant person.”

“I’m aware,” Jon remarks sardonically while staring beyond the silk curtains that sway ever so slightly with the movement of the walls.

“Indeed,” Elias says, then slides his dark square bishop to E3. “As a child, I would challenge anyone who might indulge me. But my favorite opponent was none other than our beloved Robert Smirke. He was not my best opponent, but he was certainly my favorite. So when I found out that you once competed in junior championships, I knew I had to invite you for an interview.”

Jon considers him carefully. He still knows very little about Robert Smirke as a person, or the nature of his relationship with the Institute’s dear Jonah Magnus. If the records in the archive are to be trusted, then it’s not an exaggeration to say that their friendship ended on exceptionally terrible terms.

“And what was your assessment of me?” Jon asks before moving his left bishop to G7.

Elias stares off into the distance with a smile. His features look painted, like they belong on a canvas, unbound by the muscle and sinew that holds humanity together.

Jon tries to remember that day six years ago. Dear lord, he’s changed so much since then. He’s outgrown his shell and molted so many times, but swears there are patches of dead tissue still stubbornly clinging to his skin. He didn’t even own a suit back then, so he settled for a plain shirt and tie. His clothes were rumpled, his shoes scuffed, and he spent his time on the tube picking cat fur off his trousers. He still smelt of cigarettes back then as well. That may not have been the main reason why Georgie decided to leave him, but it was certainly on the list.

Elias takes a steady breath, then moves his queen forward to D2. “I gave you white, allowing you to set the tone. You played an Italian opening. Pawn to E4, knight to F3, bishop to C4, you ticked all the boxes, nice and clean. I’ll admit, I was disappointed. I was hoping for something a bit more theatrical. Tell me, what was running through your head?”

For some reason, that question catches him off guard. He tries to remember that day back in the summer of 2011. It’s only been six years, but he might as well be watching home videos filmed decades before his birth. He remembers walking up the cracked marble steps of the Institute. They were so dilapidated he wondered if the dents were the result of natural wear or vandalism. The building seemed old and grand, but not ostentatious. Not like the newer research institutions that courted fashionable architects who wanted all their creations to resemble plaza sculptures. No, the Magnus Institute reeked of tradition, but none of the prestige. A bastard son in a fine suit surviving off the weight of his father’s name.

He remembers sitting in the waiting room, which looked very similar to the waiting room of the therapist he met in 2009 for a fifteen-minute consultation then never saw again. Maybe if he’d had the nerve to go back, then he never would have applied to the Institute. But honestly, does he have a right to complain? Any minor detail could have diverted his path. If he never applied, then someone else would have taken his place. Someone else would be the Archivist, and he would be out there in the abyss: a bruised soul reeling in the grips of hell. But instead, he’s sitting here: a warm room that smells of old books, troubled neither by hunger nor thirst, and he may just be the luckiest human left on earth. Every decision in his life has brought him here: to paradise.

He tries to recall that game. He was twenty-three at the time, and Elias seemed so very old, even though Jon knew he couldn’t be much older than forty. But in his crisp jacket and cufflinks, Jon felt like a young child sitting in his headmaster’s office, trying to understand why he was in trouble.

The Italian opening. Why did he play it? As far as he can recall, it was simply the first opening that came into his head. He was not playing to win. He was playing to appease the strange man across from him who had the power to write him a paycheck.

“I wanted to let you win so you would give me the job, while still trying to prove that I knew what I was doing.” He prudently moves a pawn to C6.

Elias nods. “I thought as much. Were you nervous?” Pawn to F3.

“I assumed beating you would have cost me the job.” Pawn to B5.

“Why would you assume that?” Knight to E2.

Jon raises his eyes in coy amusement. “You don’t look like the sort of man who knows how to lose with grace.”

That answer seems to please Elias, and his face splits into a grin. “Neither do you.”

Jon can’t help but smile in return. “No, I don’t.” He pounds his knight onto D7. So far, they’re perfectly even. Neither side has taken a single piece. They’re toeing the line, preparing their defenses, waiting for the first strike.

“What was the move that made you change course?” Elias asks. “When did you decide to start putting up a fight?” He slides his dark square bishop to H6. Thus far, it’s the boldest move of the game, putting Jon’s own bishop in the line of attack.

Jon can instantly recall the fateful move Elias played all those years ago. For the first half of the game, Jon felt like a vegetable. He was operating on rote memory, following the basic rules and strategies ingrained in him as a child. He had no qualms about losing. He didn’t even particularly want the job anyway, and he certainly didn’t want this man of all people to be his boss.

But then Elias made a move that infuriated him, and suddenly, Jon felt the urge to project every petty grievance of his life onto the smug, grotesque bastard interrogating him with those unsettling green eyes.

“Knight to D3,” Jon whispers, envisioning the move on the board. “It was so… arrogant. The way you moved it, with that smug little glide. It enraged me. I realized you were toying with me. You had no intention of giving me this job in the first place. You said it yourself, I was grossly unqualified. You simply wanted to humiliate me. And right then… I don’t know. I wanted to destroy you. Humiliate you. Demean you.”

Jon is practically spitting through his teeth by the end, and he’s ready to start biting off Elias’ pieces bit by bit. He takes Elias’ bishop without mercy.

“Ever the sportsman,” Elias hums. He calmly reaches down to claim Jon’s own bishop with his queen, his movements so unhurried it makes Jon want to snap his wrist.

“So what did you play?” Elias asks.

Jon takes a deep breath, and tries to steady himself amidst the gentle rock of the house.

“Queen to G3.”

Elias’ face lights up. “Up until then you had kept your queen nestled next to your king, always on the defensive. But then, all of a sudden you bared your teeth and dove straight for my throat. What followed was one of the most exhilarating games of my life. It was clear you had forsaken all strategy and were relying on speed and intuition, trying to catch me off-guard, offset my balance, attack before I had a chance to react. And it was beautiful.”

Jon’s heart begins to race as Elias recounts the experience. All Jon wanted was to win. He hardly cared about the job. He simply needed to win, defeat this smug bastard, punish him for wasting his time. And it almost worked.

“But then I screwed up,” Jon says, right before moving his surviving bishop to B7.

“Indeed you did.” Elias moves his pawn to A3. “Do you remember the move?”

Jon closes his eyes. The memory is so repressed that pulling it to the surface feels like digging glass out of a wound.

“Bishop to B7,” he whispers, ashamed to even say it aloud.

“An historic blunder,” Elias remarks. “It was such a galling mistake that at first I thought it must have been a trap. But no, it was a gift delivered straight into my lap. Losing a queen to a pawn? It was humiliating.”

Jon is brutally reminded why he hates this game. Why he quit playing and swore it off forever. He’s always been a sore loser by nature, but being defeated in a public arena under the judgmental gaze of strangers was simply too unbearable. Some can endure it, but most are simply better at hiding it.

“Yes, I know,” Jon responds through gritted teeth. “And then I resigned. And ten seconds later you said, ‘Congratulations, Mr. Sims. The job is yours.’ Tell me, if I had won, would you still have hired me?”

Elias smiles. “I would have hired you win, lose, or draw. I simply wanted to get to know you better.”

“So that’s it then? I’m here because I was marked by the spider and knew how to play chess? That’s why you decided to destroy my life?”

Elias seems to contemplate that question, then ever so slightly shakes his head.

“There was one other reason. You have… or I suppose had, a very pretty face. You’ve seen the oil portrait of my first body that hangs in the Institute stairwell. It’s quite a hideous sight, is it not? I spent the first ninety-eight years of my life in an objectively ugly vessel, and it may be vain of me, but I find that moving through society is exceptionally more enjoyable when you get to wear a pretty face. And when I saw you sitting there across from me… I felt so much pleasure picturing my eyes inside your head.”

Jon gulps. He swears the lights around them dim, causing the pieces on the board to cast long shadows. Gooseflesh trembles down his arms and legs. Elias is glaring at him, dissecting him, and in perfect detail, Jon can envision him plucking his immortal eyes from the corpse of Elias Bouchard and delicately placing them into Jon’s skull.

Jon looks back down at the board, trying to mask his trepidation. “I’m glad to know that all the pain I have endured was the result of one man’s vanity.” He places his king’s pawn to E5, trying to feign disinterest, even though he’s never been more frightened in his life.

Elias switches his king and rook, briefly cradling them like two precious gems. “I’ll admit, you’re now a bit rougher around the edges, but I still think we would make quite a lovely duet."

Jon can’t deny the surge of erotic interest evoked by those words. It’s almost comforting to know that there was no grand plan. No fate, no destiny, he became the Archivist simply because Jonah Magnus desired him, and one day wished to take his body as his own. It’s hard to imagine Jonah Magnus desiring anything except for power, but apparently he’s nothing more than another vain human relentless shopping for a new and better face. Just like Jon, he was once a sniveling pest of a boy with nothing but a hint of wry intelligence to lift him above the rabble, unaware that his peers could smell the insecurity and performativity like blood in the water.

Jon takes a deep breath, even though he’s not entirely sure if his lungs require air anymore. “Tell you what, if you win this game, you may have me. If I win, I shall have you.”

Elias looks ready to devour him. “And if it’s a draw?”

Jon considers the board – a general analyzing his battlefield. In their current arrangement, they are perfectly matched.

“Then perhaps we can arrive at a mutual agreement.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please let me know if you liked it.


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